(Violet's Pov)
Clem throws something at me and I catch the item. I look to it to see that it was a ration pack and I sighed as I look to her.
"I got enough." I tell her.
"It's thanks for the chocolate." She tells me and sighed and nodded.
"Thanks." I say and set it on the desk. I hear the bed creak a bit and I look to her as she looked to me. I grabbed my pistol and looked at it a bit as I took it apart and grabbed some stuff to start cleaning it. I grabbed a cloth to help get the mud off and I would look to it periodically. I guess I must have pulled at my wound a bit because I hissed a bit and set my stuff down before I grabbed my side a bit.
"How's the wound?" She asked.
"Hurts but it's fine." I tell her and she nods.
"Mind if look?" She asked and I look to her.
"Did Ruby ask?" I asked her.
"She might have said in passing." She tells me and I sighed and I move my shirt up a bit to show the bandages. She moves them a bit and makes a hissing sound.
"Bleeding still?" I asked and I look to her.
"A little should stitch it up though." She says and I look to her then move a bit to the side and she puts the bandage back. She heads out the room and I take a breath as I looked to the bloody section of my shirt and lay my head back before I heard the door open.
"Ruby is checking on everyone." She tells me and I nod as she comes over and sets the supplies on the table.
"Alright, take your shirt off." She tells me and I look to her and she rolls her eyes.
"Need better access to the wound." She tells me and I sighed and took my shirt off for her and she removed the bandages and I look to it a bit.
"So, how are you?" I asked and she looks to me. I feel her place her hand on my back and I sighed a bit as I look to her and she looked to me.
"The hell happened?" She asked and I look at her a bit. I don't answer her and she sighed a bit at this then answers my question.
"I'm fine, I didn't get a bullet in me." She says and I chuckled a bit as she got to work and put some peroxide on it and I hissed.
"Fuck." I mutter.
"This? This bothers you?" She asked.
"Don't have an adrenaline rush right now so… I feel it." I say and she laughed a bit as she worked on me more and I hissed in pain. It mostly burned right now.
"Alright, I'm done here." She tells me.
"Just give me some pain meds." I say and she hands me some. I grabbed my canteen and took a drink then put the meds in my mouth to swallow them. I look back to her as she looked to my back a bit and I sigh as I sit up a bit and try to keep her from seeing my scars. I got back to work on my pistol and I look at it and smiled when I felt it was good enough, I assembled the weapon and looked at it as I set it on the table in front of me. I look to see her still looking at me and I sighed a bit as I look to her a bit.
"I told you that my dad was a very abusive man… some of it was glass and some broken plates when I landed on my back… nothing too bad." I tell her.
"Damn." She says and I nod a bit.
"It uh… it doesn't bother me anymore, just… old wounds that I can't see, which is amazing." I tell her and she looks to me a bit and I clear my throat a bit. I wanted to end this conversation.
"… Like I said your group should be called the lucky bastards." She says and I chuckled. I look to the window a bit and take a breath.
"Looks nice… as if there is no war out there." She tells me and I nod at this.
"Reminds me of the farmers land I use to go to when I was younger." She says and I look to her.
"Oh?" I asked and she nods.
"Man named Hershel owned it… his son Shawn though died when he got run over by a tractor." She tells me.
"Did you… see it happen?" I ask and she kept quiet then looked down to the ground as she sighed.
"I just got to the farm right when it happened, ran to the house to get Hershel and he went to help his son, while his wife called for an ambulance… they didn't make it in time." She tells me.
"Damn." I mutter. We kept silent and I sighed and rubbed the top of my head and I could feel some sweat as I pull my hand back a bit.
"It was a beautiful service though." She says and I look at her.
"The flowers, the songs, the people… so family oriented… so nice to people they don't know." She says and I look back out the window.
"I always wanted a house with a lot of land, you know the American dream, nice house, a dog or two, lots of land, picket fence." I say and saw the sun starting to set and I look down a bit.
"You want to adopt?" She asked and I look at her.
"Maybe… I'm fine with not raising kids though." I tell her.
"I want a big family." She says and I chuckle.
"Ten kids?" I asked and she laughed as well and I grabbed the ration pack and took some food out and handed her some.
"Thanks." She says and I nod.
"But no, not ten kids, maybe three would be the max." She says.
"Oh, don't go saying that, you could be cursed with quadruplets." I joke and she laughed.
"Lord help me if I have quadruplets." She laughed and I grabbed my canteen and took a drink.
"But I'd still love them." She tells me and I nod at this and ate a cracker and looked to the door a bit then back to the window.
"So, you have a little brother?" I asked her.
"Yeah, AJ." She tells me and I nod at this.
"In school?" I asked and she nods.
"Elementary, he is in the second grade." She tells me and I nod.
"Hope I can get back to his safe, he thinks I went to college overseas." She tells me and I take a bite of my cracker and looked to her a bit.
"You in college?" I asked.
"Was about to go but… I guess my papers were lost because they sent me here, saying I wasn't able to go or something." She tells me.
"That's bullshit if you ask me." I tell her and she shrugged.
"It's fine, nothing I can do now, plus I get paid." She tried to joke and I look at her sadly.
"You shouldn't have that mindset though." I say and she nods.
"Yeah, I get it, but nothing I can do really." She says and I finish my cracker and set the rest of the ration pack on the table.
"Guessing it was a little town college?" I asked and she nods.
"Just a simple thing, wanted to play baseball and maybe set up a shop for sports equipment." She tells me and I nod. She had dreams, and they took that from her by sending her here.
"Well least the Army will pay for your college now, you definitely earned it." I tell her.
"Thanks… did you want to go to college?" She asked and I shook my head.
"Nah, no one in my family did." I tell her.
"So, if you did you would have been the first?" She asked and I nod.
"Yeah, but it's not an issue." I tell her.
"It should be." She tells me and I shrugged.
"Maybe I'll go one day… right now we should get some rest." I get up and then grabbed my shirt as I put it on. I set my ruck to the side of the room and I was about to lay down till I was stopped.
"Take the bed." She tells me.
"No, I'm good, trust me I'm fine, you and Ruby can take the bed." I tell her and she looks to me a bit and placed her hands on her hip.
"Not going to change your mind, are you?" She asked and I shake my head as I take a seat on the floor.
"You're very hard headed." She says as I lay back to where my head laid on my bag.
"Yep, you and your group just have to deal with it." I joke as I look to her and placed my hands on my stomach as I looked at her.
"Stubborn… I like that." She says as she leaves the room and I sighed and looked to the ceiling a bit. I look to my jacket and I grabbed the dog tags. I look to the name engraved on them and I put my finger over it to feel the name Minerva on it. I clench the tags a bit and place them on my chest with my hand covering them as I take a breath. I closed my eyes for a bit and I could hear the door open as I rested and the floor would creak. It felt good to rest up, to sleep in a house for even a short amount of time. I was woken up by someone moving so I cracked open my eye to see Clementine leaving the room. I get up slowly and I leave the room to see her heading out the front door and I place my hand to my side as I go down the steps and I head out the door and look around a bit.
"What are you doing?" I hear and look to see Clem as she looked to me.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Looking around." She says.
"For what?" I asked.
"Anything." She says and I nod at this.
"They not teach you to always have a battle buddy with you?" I asked her.
"They did." She tells me and I raise a brow at her.
"Alright, come with me." She says and I follow her as we go over a hill and look around. I look to the sky a bit and saw all the constellations in the sky.
"Did it hurt when you got up from the floor?" She asked and I look to her a bit then look back to the field.
"Not so much, I'll make it." I tell her and I see something glow a few miles out.
"The hell?" I asked as I looked to it more.
"Looks like a fire." Clem says and I nod.
"We should get the others, head out." She says and I nod as we head back in the house to see David.
"Fire north east of us, we should head out." Clem tells him and he nods.
"Alright, let's get everyone." He says as Clem and I head to get Ruby and David got the others. I grabbed my bag and jacket and we set off.
"We have to head in a different direction." Marlon says as he looked to the map with his flashlight and I look to the map as well.
"Isn't that fire in no man's land?" I asked him and he looked to me then back to the map and where the fire is.
"Seems it's not so much as a no mans land." He says and I look to David as he stopped and looked to us.
"They might be burning it to warn people." He says and we chuckled.
"Warn their people and the enemies, great idea." Louis says and I put my hand on his shoulder.
"Dude people can be so dumb sometimes." I say.
"You're right, sadly if we were smart no wars would happen, peace on earth, Merry Christmas." He joked and we laughed.
"There is nothing funny about this, most of the time you guys joke." Luke says and we look to him.
"So? It's best to joke when you can, we have to keep moral up or we're just going to be depressed zombies, not giving a damn." Mitch tells him.
"They are kind of right Luke, it's fine to joke around when you can out here." David tells him.
"It's not funny when it involves people dying." Luke says.
"We aren't making fun of our own people." Louis says and I look to him and take my hand off his shoulder.
"It doesn't matter, people are people." He says.
"Ah yes and a whole ass country could go against their own dictator if they didn't want to start a war, revolts are a thing, could have saved millions but no, many people are so dumb that they would rather die in a battle than at home with their families." Mitch says.
"They chose to not fight their crazed dictator, they wanted this, they want to take over the entire world just like any other person or group of people would, and all for the wrong reasons, they don't care so why should we?" Mitch asked Luke and we all look to him.
"Maybe they couldn't fight against their own… maybe their families were threatened, for fuck sake do neither of you people think?" He asked.
"Bullshit, the military could have stood by and let the people kill a mad man, but no they didn't they're just as crazy." I tell him.
"Yeah, and if your family was threatened?" He asked and I look to him.
"Exactly." He says.
"My grandmother is already dead along with my grandfather, I could give two shits if my dad was the one they chose to kill, but you will not say I would be the type of person who would have their own mother killed, because I would do whatever I could to keep her safe… no matter how much I dislike her." I say and shove him.
"But you seem the type that would fucking let people step all over you and you would just bend over and let them ram their dick do far up your ass, you'd probably thank them and ask for more." I say and he shoved me and I shove him again making him fall backwards before David grabbed me.
"Stop it both of you." He says.
"No, he's not going to stand there and think he knows it all." I say pissed off.
"Hey just everyone calm down." Clementine says and I get out of David's grip and I move away from Luke. Ruby grabbed me as we walked ahead of everyone and I see Louis next to me and I look to him then sighed.
"Sorry." I mutter to them.
"It's fine." Ruby says and I put my hand to my side.
"Side hurts?" She asked.
"A little but it's fine." I tell her.
"Did you let Clem stitch you up?" She asked.
"You let the new girl patch you up?" Louis asked and I roll my eyes.
"Yeah so?" I asked him.
"Nothing." He says and I look to him and shrugged. It took us a few more days before we finally reached the area of the bridge and I look around just as we meet up with other soldiers.
"Holy shit." I hear and turn to see Brody.
"Holy fuck, Brody?" I asked as I walked up to her.
"Shit I haven't seen you in almost two years." She says as she hugged me.
"I've been here, when did you get here?" I asked.
"Just three weeks ago, working as a temp medic till they can send me back to the states." She says and I chuckle.
"BRODY!" I hear and Louis runs up and hugs her as she laughed.
"Holy shit what are you doing here?" He asked and she explained what happened.
"God it's like everyone is here." He says and I nod.
"What are you guys doing here?" She asked as we walk over to the group.
"We had to go with a new group to head here, they lost their ammo and supplies from what we heard the lieutenant say before we were grouped with them." Aasim tells her as she gives her a hug.
"Are all of you ok though?" She asked.
"Well Louis here got a graze on his helmet." I say tapping the man's head.
"Holy shit." She says.
"And Vi here got shot in the side." He says and she looks to me worried.
"I'm fine, nothing bad or serious." I tell her and she sighed.
"Alright I trust you… anyway anyone else here we know of?" She asked and I rubbed the back of my neck a bit and sighed.
"Um… Minerva was here but… She died." Omar says and I look down a bit at this.
"Oh god Violet I'm so sorry." She says and I wave it off.
"It's fine, it's… I'm ok." I tell her. Mitch comes over with a new bag to carry his explosives and he talks with Brody for a bit as well. We talked for a good while before someone yells for us.
"HEY WE'RE ABOUT TO HEAD OUT AGAIN!" I hear Luke yell and we turn to him.
"We only had to stay with you till we got here." Aasim tells him.
"New orders." He tells us.
"You got to be fucking kidding me." I mutter and rubbed my head.
"Hey, get some supplies and let's head out." David says.
"Wait who said we had to continue going with you guys, our mission is basically done." Mitch says and David hands us a letter.
"From your platoon leader." He says and I grabbed the letter and looked to it.
"You've got to be kidding." Mitch says as he takes the letter from me.
"Everything ok?" I hear and look to Clem.
"Seems like we're going to be with you guys for a while." Louis tells her and she looked to us.
"I thought-."
"Their platoon leader asked to keep them with us, besides I like this group." David says and I look to him.
"Alright let's get ready." I mutter as we grabbed some more stuff, they even provided us with a vehicle and everyone gets in. David then starts up the vehicle and starts driving us to the next location and I lay my head to the side a bit.
"Tired?" I hear Clementine whisper to me and I move my head to look at her and I shake my head.
"No, just want to relax." I whispered back and looked to the side where the land was moving by quickly.
"Where else are we going?" Marlon asked as he got near David.
"Heading north, they said something about needing more man power up there." David says.
"More man power." I scoffed and looked to the side.
"Look we have a job-."
"A job we technically already did, we weren't told-."
"Alright stop it, we have a new objective and we have to do it as told." David says.
"We're basically glorified babysitters for others at this point, and it's starting to piss me off." I say.
"Look if you have any idea on how to end all this, we'd be glad to hear this master plan." Luke says and I roll my eyes.
"Yeah, we go and kill the leader that started all this." I say sarcastically.
"Oh, fuck you." Luke says.
"What? It's true, kill the assholes that start this shit, or don't and let millions die." I say to him as he glares at me.
"Then why didn't you try and kill them hu? You could have just ended all this early." He says and I roll my eyes.
"Yeah, and like we said before, the damn people themselves could have ended all this before it even started." I argued back and take a breath.
"And like I said-."
"Alright both of you stop this shit right now, Jesus a bunch of fucking kids." David says as he kept driving and I look down. I feel my hands shaking a bit and I clasp my hands together glad that the vehicle was shaking from the dirt road.
"Look we are all tired and we want all this to end, god knows how long it will take, but we all have jobs here that need to be done." David says and I sighed a bit.
"So, what exactly are we doing?" I asked again.
"There is a group of soldiers that need help, apparently there was a camp." David says.
"A camp?" Clem asked.
"Death Camp, Labor, Camp, no idea but it was filled with kids." He says.
"So what? Are we taking the kids to our side till we find their parents?" Louis asked.
"Watch over them, and yes maybe try to find their parents." Luke says and I look down as David kept driving.
"We should reach them by nightfall." David says and I nod and lay my head back a bit. We passed a few soldiers as they drove past us an we would wave to them and I rubbed my head a bit. We did reach with one group called The Ranchers, mostly due to the fact that everyone in this group had worked on a farm before heading out here. It was funny.
"Hey welcome, thanks for coming." One man says as David stops the vehicle.
"Here to help, what do you need us to do?" David asked.
"Need two people to take care of a group of kids, each." They explained and David groups us in pairs and we head on over to the kids.
"You think we can find their parents?" Louis asked and I sighed.
"Maybe for some, not for all if they were… at these things." I say as we look around. We go over to the kids and some soldiers were playing soccer with them as we come up.
"Come to relive us?" One of the soldiers panted and we both nod at this.
"Yep, go get something to eat." Louis tells them and they leave and I look to the kids as they look to us.
"Want to play?" One of them asked in English and I look to Louis as he looked to me. We both nod to the kids and we play some soccer with them. We kicked the ball to each of the kid as they tried to get it through the makeshift goal and I could see that they weren't as malnourished as some of the other kids either. Some of them looked like they couldn't walk let alone run. I look to the side as Clementine was helping Ruby with one of the kids feeding them just a little bit and giving them little water.
"What's up?" Louis asked as he came over to me and looked over to Clementine and Ruby.
"Poor kids." He whispers and I rubbed the back of my head.
"They can't eat or drink a lot or they'll die." I mutter and look back to the other kids as they kept playing with each other.
"This is so fucked." He says and I nod. We were here for a few hours when a new group of soldiers came with bigger vehicles and I look to Louis as I go over to them and he watched the kids.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Here to transport any kids we can, we have a few vehicles to help with the ones that are sick." The man tells us and I nod as Ruby comes over and tells the soldier where they could park the vehicle. Clementine had gone over to Louis and she was talking with one of the kids.
"So you're here to help?" A kid asked her and she nod.
"Yep, all of us in these uniforms are here to help you." She says and I stand next to her and she stands up and I look to her a bit then to the kid. A little girl runs up to us and I look to them.
"Is my older sister going to be ok?" She asked.
"Who's your older sister?" I asked and she points over to the sick group and I look to see it was the same kid Clem and Ruby were working on when I looked over to them.
"She'll be fine, they might bring you with her." Clem tells the girl and she nods as she runs over to her sister and I look to Clem.
"Is she really going to be ok?" I asked her.
"Seems like she was mostly starved here, as long as they don't feed her quickly nothing bad will happen." She tells me as other kids were taken by the soldiers and I look to them.
"They'll be fine." She says and I nod a bit.
"Yeah… yeah um… are we staying here or moving on?" I asked her.
"From what I hear you're stuck with us." She joked and I chuckled a bit.
"Oh really?" I asked and she nods.
"Yes… but you guys are fun." She says to me.
"Even if we argue with your buddies?" I asked her.
"Eh Luke kind of deserved it." She shrugged and I look to the trucks as thy leave and I sighed and saw more kids.
"We staying here till the last kid is gone?" I mutter.
"Yeah, we can't find their parents from here, but we did hear from one of the older kids that they were taken to a different location, only thing is we don't know where exactly." She tells me.
"So different camps, one for children one for adults." I say.
"Yeah… though it's a good thing, the parents might be worse off." She tells me and I look to her a bit.
"Should be heading out soon, once the last truck comes by to get the kids, we have to head to another camp." David says as he came over to us.
"Another?" Clem asked.
"Teens and adults." He says and I shake my head at this. We go off to the side to deal with the sicker kids and I helped her as I gave them little food and water. They thanked us and I feel like shit having to deal with this.
"Kids, god damn kids." I mutter.
"I know… shit some of them are my brothers age." Clementine tells me and I look to her.
"I'm sorry if this is bothering you." I say.
"It's… It's just fucked up." She says and I nod in agreement. We waited and waited but the other truck didn't come.
"Where the hell is that truck?" I hear and look over to the other soldiers as they talked.
"They should have been here hours ago." Another soldier says and I take a breath as I helped Clementine with another kid who started to cough. They ended up coughing on my jacket and I see blood and I look to Clem as she cleaned the girls face a bit.
"Look we can't stay here any longer." A soldier says and I look over to them and glare.
"Seems they will be here tomorrow, they had to take cover there seem to have been enemies at the halfway point." Aasim informs us as he came over and handed us something to eat and I sighed as the kid laid her head on my lap to sleep.
"They call in?" I asked and he nods.
"Yeah, sounded real bad." He tells us and Ruby comes over to us.
"She's sleeping… I hope." I say as she puts her hand on the girls' wrist to check her pulse.
"Yeah, she's good, heart beat is strong." Ruby tells me and I nod a bit. A few more hours would pass and I helped Ruby and the others move the kids to a safe tent that was put up. I lay the kid on a cot and they brought every kid any pillows and blankets they had. I walk over to Clem as Ruby got to work and I exit out the tent to see many more tents and kids being taken into them.
"Dear god this is just fucked up." I mutter.
"All we can do is help." She says and I sighed.
"Alright we have to head out again." Luke says.
"I thought we had to-."
"We need to go to the other camps; we can't waste time here." He says.
"Waste?" Ruby asked as she got out the tent.
"Yes waste-." Luke tried to say but Ruby cut him off.
"Look here Luke, we were told to help these kids, and that's what we're going to do, it's not a fucking waste, fucking asshole." She says to him.
"I am your-."
"You are not my boss, and you can shove those orders up your damn ass, now if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do." She says and leaves and I look to her and chuckled.
"Damn, she went off on him." I mutter and he glares at me and I look back to him. I sighed and we get to work before David comes over to us.
"How is everything?" He asked.
"Are we supposed to be heading out soon?" Clem asked him.
"Once the truck gets here why?" He asked and I look over to Luke.
"Is Luke ok?" I asked as I look to David.
"Did he say something weird?" He asked.
"He said it was a waste of time." I tell him.
"Right… Before Luke was in our group he was with another one, they had been to a camp like this before, and…. Majority of the kids were dead or dying." David tells me and I look down.
"Sorry but he can't be saying that around us." I tell him.
"Why?" Clem asked and I rubbed my neck.
"We don't take to kind to people who say it's a waste of time to help people…. We use to be very weary of adults too when we went to the boarding school, teachers weren't very nice." I explain to them.
"How so? I thought they were supposed to help kids with trouble?" Clem asked and I shake my head a bit.
"If you missed one problem on an assignment because you didn't understand, whack to the hand with a ruler, if you spoke up when you were excited to learn something that interests you." I say and I point to Aasim.
"You were hit in the mouth with a hand." I tell them.
"They did that to him?" She asked and I nod.
"If you notice he always carries a little book with him, he writes it down instead of speaking out about it." I tell her and look to David.
"We know all people aren't bad, that's why I wanted to know if Luke was ok." I tell him and he nods.
"He needs some rest." David says and then walked away and Clem and I go and take a seat and I grabbed a cigarette.
"What else happened at the school?" She asked and I look to her as I lit up my cigarette and hand her one too but she declined and I nod.
"I was the one to get wacked when I didn't understand a problem, made me hate math so much." I tried to joke and I sighed.
"Louis use to listen to music when he studied back home, that's what made him want to be a musician in the first place… he had a hard time studying without it and the teachers kept punishing him because he wouldn't stop taping his hand on the desk… that and they were racist assholes." I mutter and look to the man and waved back to him as he waved to me.
"Mitch, loves Chemistry, but he wasn't allowed to work in labs as a punishment, and when he tried to help one kid he was sent somewhere, I don't know but he would be gone for days… made him angry for a while that he would stay away from people except us." I tell her and I look to Omar.
"Omar…. Loved to cook, best god damn cookies I ever had, but… he kept being told Cooking was a woman's job, they… thought he was gay and… a group of kids tried to beat him up because of it…. until we showed up, God that fight… I think I broke a kid's leg when they called Louis and Omar a slur." I laughed and look to my feet.
"What about Marlon?" She asked and I look to him.
"He was mostly taught to be a leader, at one point it got to be to much and he had a break down, teachers thought he was fucked up and they thought, oh let's hit him to get him to be better, no emotions if he only feels pain… He has a scar on his forehead, looks like a bullet hole but it was a burn from one of the teachers using a torch on him… we burnt half the school down when we found out." I tell her.
"Jesus." She says.
"Oh, don't worry we made sure no one wa hurt… we weren't that cruel." I tell her.
"Oh… well fuck those teachers." She says and I laughed.
"Only good one was the one who taught Ruby… she actually helped us, she went to medical school and wanted to understand how to help kids without being physical with them… that's why we aren't as fucked up." I tell her.
"What happened to Ruby?" She asked and I take a puff of my cigarette.
"She had a very… foul mouth… they tried to wash it away with soap, didn't work, they slapped her in the face, didn't work just made Ruby angrier…. Then Ms. Martian came to the school… she told Ruby she could swear in her office if she was angry, let it out… Ruby then told us about her and so we started to go to her to get help… she was a sweetheart." I say and then sighed.
"She had to leave by the time Aasim and were about to Leave the school… she had something wrong with her and it made her sick… we visited her and every time she gave us a smile even though we couldn't smile anymore when we saw how bad she was getting." I tell Clem.
"Talking about Ms. Martian?" I hear and look to see Ruby and I nod as she takes a seat with us and I hand her a cigarette which she took.
"She had cancer but didn't want to take any of the treatments, not that she didn't believe it would work but… she told me that she wanted to go her own way." Ruby tells us and I look to the side.
"She's the reason we still care." Ruby says as I light her cigarette.
"She sounds like she was a great woman." Clem tells us and we nod. Night was upon us and we were sitting by a fire and I was eating an MRE.
"When I get back home, I'm making some chicken culets." I mutter and the others laughed.
"You and those damn cutlets." Louis says as he shoved me and I shove him back.
"They're delicious and you know it." I tell him and he laughed.
"Would be great, a lot better than this." He says and I chuckled. I look to the side to see Clementine writing something and she looks to me.
"Yes?" She asked.
"Writing to a lover?" I joke and she hit me and the group laughed.
"What?" I laughed and she glares a bit at me and I lift my hands up in a mock surrender.
"I'm writing to my dad." She says.
"Ah gotcha, sorry for the bad joke." I say and she nods.
"What's your dad like?" Louis asked and I hand him my last piece of chocolate.
"He's a very smart man, use to be a history teacher at a big college." She tells us and I see Aasim sit up a bit at this.
"You said use to be… something happened?" Omar asked.
"He teaches at a high school level now as a substitute, but his old college… someone made a complaint and they believed them over him… was almost sent to prison for it." She tells us and I look to her.
"What did they say?" I asked and she shrugged.
"He never told me, said it wasn't my place to know or worry about." She tells us and I look at her. More and more time would pass us by as we went to different camps to help the prisoners, some were even our own soldiers kept as POW's others were prisoners of their own country and it made me sick. We finally meet up with a group of other soldiers as they were setting up camp and they said we could stay with them. Aasim got to work on the radio and I was sitting near a fire clutching my dog tags with one hand and my rifle with the other.
-One Year Later-
Currently Clementine and I were on a recon mission on our own. It seemed that the enemy was making well use of the no man's land that they kept themselves hidden and would run back to the deserted landmass that our own people were sending snipers out to see if we could get any before they were able to escape back to their hiding.
"Stupid all of it." I mutter as we were in a tree and I hand Clem a part of my rations as she hands me some of hers.
"What? The fact they have us here or the fact that we didn't think of using abandoned land first?" She asked and I ate the cheese and cracker and I look to the land a bit.
"The fact that we are out here for one thing, the fact that this was has been going on for so long." I say and shake my head a bit and grabbed my binoculars to try and find something.
"Your hand is shaking." She says and I pull the binoculars back and see that it was and I sigh.
"Fucking stupid." I mutter and look back to the land.
"I got a telegram a while back." She tells me and I look to her.
"Oh? What did it say?" I asked.
"Something about going on leave." She tells me and I chuckled a bit.
"Same… when do they send you back home?" I asked as I look around some more.
"In June." She tells me and I look at her.
"June ninth by any chance?" I asked and she nods.
"Yeah, how'd you know?" She asked.
"Same here." I tell her and she laughed a bit.
"Such a small world." She says and I chuckled a bit then looked to the land and saw some movement so I motion for Clem to keep quiet and she grabs her rifle and looked through the scope then shakes her head.
"Just a dog." She says and I look to see that it was a dog and I set my own rifle down and she handed me another cracker and I handed her some cheese.
"Kleiner Hund, der herumläuft, ein Welpe, der verloren ist, aber eines Tages gefunden wird." (Little dog running around, a puppy who is lost but will be found one day). I say.
"For the time I have known you, I still can't believe you know so many different languages." She tells me and I look to her a bit then to my hand.
"Honestly not much for some for instance I can read Thai but I can't speak it good enough, had to learn Spanish to pass classes in Texas, and my German is a bit rusty, my grandmother was German." I tell her and I swing my legs a bit.
"She wasn't a uh… you know?" She asked and I looked to her a bit.
"No god no, she wasn't one of those people, her father on the other hand… tried to get her to believe in that stuff but she ran away from home when he joined… that group." I say and shiver at the thought.
"Jesus." She says and I look to her.
"My grandmother disowned him, fucker was blown to pieces though and I say good, one less fuckwad on this earth." I tell her and then saw movement again and we both aimed our rifles and I saw a person and took aim.
"Hold on, don't shoot yet." She whispers as we keep watching them as they walk into the no man land moving to different spots as if avoiding something. I keep watching as they finally make it to a trench and I grabbed the small map Marlon made for us and I mark the area as Clem kept an eye on them.
"Seems like there is three over where the man just went, could be more hidden." She whispers and I nod as I grabbed a light and looked to the other tree and flashed a message to them. The one good thing we were up so high and hidden that the enemy shouldn't be able to see us with our lights. I waited till they sent a message back to us and I look to Clem.
"They say they see five men in the trenches, they marked the maps they have, but we should send a message to Aasim." I whisper and she nods as she looks some more.
"Is that a machine gun?" She asked and I look through my scope and I do see some type of machinery but it looked way to damaged to tell what it was. I set the scope down and relay another message warning them of a potential machine gun in the area and they send a message back.
"It's busted, they might be trying to fix it though." I whisper and she sighed.
"I can take one out right now." She says quietly and I think.
"To risky, more can be hidden in the trenches, for all we know there could be an entire battalion hidden there, and we only have six snipers, we don't know how many they have." I say and I look through my scope.
"I get that but why can't we bomb the area?" She asked and I thought a bit and then sent a message and she looked to me.
What are you asking?" She whispered.
"What you just asked, seems a bit odd that we can't bomb the place, we have the planes to do it." I whisper back and we look to the message that they send back to us.
"They have some of our soldiers?" She asked.
"Seems so." I say and look back to the other snipers and send a message and nod at the message they send back.
"We can head out they will keep watch; we can tell Aasim to send a message about what we found." I tell her and she nods. We get out to the tree as quietly as we could and slowly too. One I was down on the ground I look up to Clementine and she lost her footing so I catch her and she looked up to me a bit shocked and I smile a bit and held back a laugh as I help set her down and she started to walk away and I follow her and shake my head. When we get a good distance away I look to her.
"Are you ok?" I asked.
"Fine." She responded quickly and I look to her a bit.
"No cuts or anything?" I asked.
"Nope, fine as ever." She says and I look to the front of us.
"It's ok that you just slipped, happens to all of us." I tell her and she looked to me.
"It's-… it's fine I know." She says and I sighed a bit and we finally reach the others.
"What are you doing back?" Luke asked.
"We need to send a message out warning people of the potential Machine gun and possibly our soldiers being out there." Clem explained and I nod.
"Damn." He mutters and we head to Aasim who was currently on the radio.
"I get that but… hold on." He says and looks to us and I write down what we want to tell him and hand him the note.
"Ok, thanks." He nods to us and gets to work and we go find David to tell him what is going on.
"The others said this?" He asked and I nod.
"Yeah… we don't know if anyone else knows but we asked to come back here to relay the messages." I tell him and he nods.
"Alright… well you two were only meant to do recon so take some time and relax a bit." He tells us and I nod and we head to the tents and I watch her grab her notepad and she wrote.
"Have you gotten a letter from them?" I asked and she shook her head.
"In my first letter I told them not to write back… have a fear of people taking the letter and finding out where I live." She tells me and I nod.
"I get it." I say and she nods at this.